it felt a bit like getting married all over again: invites, giveaways, food, photos, games, good friends and family. only i waddled instead of glided and i didn’t have to hold my breath to hide my protruding tummy. 🙂

big thank yous to everyone who came and made last sunday such a fun, fun day! and a giant thank you to atha for making everything so, so pretty! 😀

once we began seriously preparing the baby’s things, it didn’t take long before it became apparent that even before he’s out of my tummy, the kid already owns more stuff than alvin and i do combined.

i was half-hoping we could just stash all the baby clothes and other whatnot into the remaining space in the cabinet we’ve been using to keep our towels and linens in, but the boxes and boxes filled with miniature things in the spare room beg to differ. there’s no denying it — the baby’s going to need his own cabinet.

so we began looking for one. we made the rounds of the furniture places — the home and furniture sections of various department stores, stand alone furniture stores in malls, secondhand shops, online furniture stores — and came up with nothing. the cabinets we saw were either too expensive, looked flimsy, or looked flimsy *and* were expensive.

we decided the best way to go was to have one custom-made.

now, we got this ivory-colored shelf which we really love through a cashcashpinoy deal a few months back, it was made from recycled wood (another plus!) and we thought maybe we could get a quote for the cabinet from the seller. the company’s name was only wood but though we kept googling the name, we couldn’t find a way to contact them directly so we thought that was pretty much the end of that.

ivory-colored shelf made from recycled wood

then one night alvin and i were driving along east service road in muntinlupa on our way home from somewhere and we drove right past only wood’s showroom! now if that wasn’t destiny, i don’t know what is!

they have such pretty, pretty wooden things but we fell hard for this cabinet.

love at first sight.

i was so in love with it i was ready to go find the nearest atm so i could buy the thing right then and there and carry it home with me if alvin, who is way less impulsive than i am, hadn’t stopped me. realistically, though oh-so-pretty i still dream about it up to now, the proportions of the cabinet didn’t really fit our needs.

so we ordered one that did and it arrived today!

whitewashed cabinet to be filled with all things baby!

i love the metal hinges and handles!

we like it! 😀

of course it goes without saying that this cabinet is really mine and i’m only loaning it to the kid until he saves up enough money to buy his own. :p

given the current size of my tummy (and how i’ve started to substitute walking with waddling to get from here to there the past couple of weeks), alvin and i decided that we can’t put off diaper-buying any longer. so last night found us at the landmark’s diaper aisle, inspecting pack after pack of disposable diapers with confused expressions on our faces. we looked so clueless i promise you the only things lacking were ‘first time parent’ signs tacked on our foreheads.

we’ve been advised to get small packs of different disposable diaper brands at the start so we can try each of them out and see which will work best with our baby’s butt. with this important piece of advice in mind, we carefully picked out a pack each of prokids, drypers, and, just to be contrary, this japanese brand weirdly named goo.n.

i wanted to gauge how long this first batch of diapers would last so i had alvin divide the total number of diapers by 8, which, according to friends and articles, is the average number of times a newborn needs to be changed in a day.

me: one week, that’s how long this stash would last.

alvin: what?! one week? what?! how many diapers would he need in a day anyway?

first, he was given colorful food containers, cute sippy cups and cuddly comforters!

from tita chummy and tita anne!

then a few days ago, a magic box arrived filled with almost-everything a newborn little boy would need: socks, onesies, milk bottles, a breast pump, breastfeeding covers and other breastfeeding paraphernalia, newborn formula, receiving blankets, swaddling cloths, a play mat with crinkly elephant ears, a bouncy chair, and a partridge in a pear tree!

going through the box was like being given free rein to explore mary poppins’ bottomless carpetbag — it even had lotion for mommy’s tummy!

and suddenly it’s only two and a half months before my due date and the ample time i thought i had to prepare for the baby’s arrival is looking very, very un-ample.

thankfully, generous friends and family jump started my much-delayed nesting urge with thoughtful gifts and hand-me-downs, so much so that when combined with the measly things i bought in a fit of panic, it actually looks like the baby won’t have to come home naked and sleep on a towel spread on the parquet floor.

we’re equally grateful to those who patiently gave us advice on all things parenty — from what kind of onesies we should get to where to buy them to which silicone nipple is compatible with which baby bottle. (yes, this is how clueless we are.)

and so we say to you, generous friends and family, thank you from the bottom of alvin’s and my first-time-parents, headless-chickeny hearts! 😀